


From Trianguli VI It Came

by Silent_So_Long



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen, Gen Fic, Possession, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-30
Updated: 2011-08-30
Packaged: 2017-10-23 06:10:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/247074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silent_So_Long/pseuds/Silent_So_Long
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What should have been a standard exploration of the surface of Trianguli VI soon turned into an event of near nightmare proportions for Dr McCoy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Trianguli VI It Came

**Author's Note:**

> The following story was inspired by a dream I had one night and is set sometime after the TOS second series episode Amok Time.

The sun beat down upon the surface of Trianguli VI in steaming waves of orange-red light. Leonard McCoy mopped his brow, dark hair clinging to his forehead in damp strands, heat claiming him and sapping his energy as he strode alongside Jim Kirk. McCoy was somewhat mollified to see that Kirk looked just as hot and as sapped of energy as he felt. Sweat trickled down the captain’s forehead, and his hair was slightly matted to his forehead.

Behind them, Spock trailed, recording their findings upon his tricorder, arching one eyebrow every now and again as he discovered something particularly fascinating. Only the Vulcan, out of all of them, seemed to be unaffected by the heat and the sun, which surprised neither Kirk nor McCoy. They’d all only recently visited the planet Vulcan when Spock had been travelling alone through the minefields of his pon farr, and had subsequently fought Kirk in a match presided over by T’Pring and T’Pau. Vulcan, as a planet, had been just as hot and oppressive to both McCoy and Kirk, who’d been glad to get out of there, although, admittedly, by duplicitous means on the good doctor‘s part.

“You think there’s life here, Jim?” McCoy asked, blue eyes scanning the brush around them.

The plants looked just as alien to him as it did on any planet that wasn’t Earth. For a moment he remembered the grasses of home, and the trees of Georgia, lost in his past. He felt a wave of homesickness then for Georgia, that state he’d left behind some time ago, before he’d been called amongst the stars on starships sailing through the vast blankness of space.

“I don’t know,” Kirk replied, eyes scanning the rocks nearby. “It doesn’t seem like it so far, although the sensors seemed to think that there was something here.”

“I concur. Sensors clearly indicated a humanoid life form in this area. It is only logical that we will meet up with said life form at some juncture,” Spock said from behind them, one eyebrow raised at the doctor for his suspension of belief.

McCoy rolled his eyes and was about to speak, yet Kirk stopped him. The captain clamped one hand upon McCoy’s forearm, gaze intent upon a stand of reddish rocks to one side. The rocks arched up against the side of a rocky hill, grass a burnished brown against the reddened rocks. A cave had been carved into the side of the hill, via a series of natural progressions and erosions performed upon the porous rocks.

Kirk indicated movement, one hand pointing towards the side as the movement happened again. A dark shape moved against the red and brown backdrop of the hill behind, long dark robes shifting in the humid wind. The figure, clearly female, was bent slightly, back stooped and gait awkward as she shuffled purposefully towards them, eyes intent and focussed despite the obvious age of the body.

She was speaking even before she reached the trio from the Enterprise, voice surprisingly strong for one so seemingly old and frail. Power seemed to resonate through her tone and through her words, denoting the fact that she was stronger than her body might entail.

“You must leave here. Immediately. You do not belong here. None of you,” she said, voice carrying to the trio over the intervening distance between them quite easily.

“We mean no harm,” Kirk called back, tone reassuring, smile brightening his features a little.

“I said, go,” the old lady said, anger fairly radiating from her body in waves. “This place is not for you. It’s my planet and I wish to be left alone. You must leave this place or suffer my wrath.”

Kirk exchanged a glance with first McCoy and then Spock, before he spoke once more.

“We mean you no harm, ma’am,” he tried again, a slight frown working over his eyes, creasing the skin between his brows.

He opened his mouth to speak further, but didn’t get the chance to even begin forming words. The old lady before them raised her hand, a bright bluish glow forming around her fingers. Her eyes narrowed and she stared at the three of them. Without warning, the energy now liberally crackling around her hand shot through the air in a glittering arc, hitting McCoy squarely upon his chest. McCoy cried out, falling back onto the ground, eyes closing as the doctor fell into unconsciousness.

Kirk reacted almost as soon as the doctor hit the ground, setting his phaser to stun and opening fire upon the old lady. Before the phaser could hit her, however, the lady had disappeared, leaving nothing behind but a shower of dust in her wake. Spock was already kneeling beside the lax form of McCoy when Kirk turned back to them, cursing his bad timing and even worse shot. The captain soon knelt beside the fallen doctor, shaking McCoy’s shoulder.

“Bones,” he said, urgently. “Bones, can you hear me?”

“He’s unconscious, Jim,” Spock replied, morosely, frowning as he stared into the lax face of McCoy. “We have to get him back to the Enterprise, and quickly.”

Kirk nodded, face a blank mask in his extreme concern, before he flipped open his communicator.

“Kirk to Enterprise. We have a man down. I repeat, we have a man down. Beam us aboard, post haste. Three to board,” he said, grimly.

“Aye aye, Cap’n,” came the familiar voice of Scotty over the communicator.

Kirk flipped the communicator closed, hazel eyes staring far off into the distance as he pondered the disappearance of the old lady. He wondered at the reason behind her attack, whether it was just a warning shot to convince them to leave her be, or whether it was something more sinister. He had little time to think, for his atoms then spread in the familiar blue-white glow of transportation. The familiar surrounds of the transporter room soon greeted him, followed by the concerned, kind face of Scotty.

“What happened, Cap’n?” Scotty asked, as he took in the prone form of McCoy laying between Kirk and Spock.

“He got caught in some kind of spell thrown by what I can only assume was a witch,” Kirk replied, gravely, as he attempted to hoist McCoy bodily to his feet. “Help me, Spock. He’s heavier than he looks.”

Spock nodded, and helped to lift McCoy between them. As one they moved through the corridors of the Enterprise, until they reached the MedBay. A nurse soon attended McCoy, administering a hypo-spray to the side of McCoy’s neck, in the hopes of rousing the doctor.

*~*~*

McCoy found it a strange experience to see his own body from the outside, first on the planet’s surface, then in the transporter room and finally in the MedBay. It felt even stranger to be essentially a shade of himself following the progress of said body, that vessel which usually carried his soul, his spirit and everything that essentially made up Leonard Horatio McCoy. Now, his body was just an empty shell, leaving his soul firmly on the outside, unable to re-enter the body that was rightly his.

His body looked thinner than he’d ever imagined it to be, somehow more fragile and lacking in the strength that carried McCoy through every single day aboard the Enterprise. McCoy watched Kirk’s angry expression, anger which covered up the captain’s complete and utter concern over him, and Spock’s usual carefully guarded expression. Out of the two of them, the two men whom McCoy considered his closest friends and allies, Kirk was the easiest to read, as per usual. Spock was the typical closed book, watching closely over the abandoned and empty body of McCoy, while Kirk paced the room angrily, tension and concerned anxiety thrumming through the captain’s very frame.

McCoy listened as the captain conferred with his second in command, positing that the witch below had somehow harmed McCoy, yet neither could possibly know just how much damage that witch had done. McCoy tried communicating with Kirk and with Spock, first speaking to them directly, then screaming in their ears, yelling for attention when no attention could be given, at least to the doctor in his current state of amorphous reality.

McCoy had never felt so removed from everything he considered his and didn't realize up until then just how much he really had. To miss touching his own body, to even simple things like brushing his hair - now gone. Things like the brief touches with Kirk, fleeting arm pats and casual touches between friends that no one ever noticed but still were intrinsically there all the same - all gone. Even the act of speaking had been forcibly removed from McCoy’s sphere of reality, and nothing he could say or actively yell at anyone would ever get heard anymore.

McCoy felt helpless, desperately alone and uncertain as to what he should do. As one last ditch effort, he punched Spock, the closest stationary thing to him at the present time, and was surprised when Spock suddenly flinched, then frowned.

“Hey! Hey, Spock,” McCoy yelled, relief flooding through his spirit at even that brief reaction. “Hey, I’m here! Help me, will ya?”

He punched the Vulcan again, and kicked him in the shin, whooping with some scant satisfaction when Spock frowned, brown eyes scanning the room intently. Even though the Vulcan couldn’t see him, McCoy felt it a breakthrough that he could at least feel something of McCoy there, unlike Kirk who simply walked straight through the spot where McCoy currently stood without a reaction at all. McCoy shuddered, spirit thinned and stretched by the fact that Kirk was, for one brief instant, occupying the same space as he was, before the Captain moved on, leaving the wispy remnants of Leonard McCoy behind. That brief contact left McCoy with the brief impression of how deeply the captain was currently affected by the situation at hand, unmitigated grief for a fallen comrade and McCoy’s heart clenched slightly.

“I ain’t dead, yet, Jim,” McCoy tried yelling at Kirk’s head, to no avail.

Spock frowned again, almost turning to where McCoy’s spirit stood, brown eyes skimming over the exact spot where McCoy was staring at him from.

“Spock? What’s up? You look distracted,” Kirk said, as he stopped in front of the Vulcan.

“Distraction is for those with an unfocussed and weak mind, Captain,” Spock predictably said. “However, I must admit to feeling something akin to this distraction, although this is not because of tardy thoughts or ill attention.”

“God forbid that that will ever happen,” Kirk said, with something like his usual snarky charm.

“Indeed. I merely felt as though there was something else in this room with us,” Spock told the captain. “Another presence, perhaps, unseen but still there anyway.”

“Yeah? There’s only McCoy here,” Kirk replied, gesturing towards the prone form of the doctor in the bed.

Spock’s expression changed imperceptibly, as though the Vulcan didn’t believe that that was entirely correct, but a call from the bridge alerted the duo to impending communications from Starfleet. Kirk left the room first, with one backwards glance at McCoy’s body, before Spock also followed him from the room, door slowly hissing shut behind them.

McCoy was left alone in the room, with only the silence to keep him company. He sighed and watched the movement of his chest rising and falling, flesh and blood vessel laying prone on the bed nearby. On instinct. McCoy laid one ethereal hand upon the chest of his physical body, feeling the slight tremors of his own heart beating solidly away. He tried pushing his hand, his essence deep inside his body again, in an attempt to reclaim that which was his by right and by birth, yet found his way obstructed once more.

“Dammit,” McCoy cursed angrily. “Why won’t you let me in? More to the point, why won’t I let me in? This is getting confusing fast.”

He half turned, scowling ferociously at the wall that faced him, both physically and mentally. It seemed his own body, his own flesh and blood was suddenly an obstruction, an impenetrable force that was perhaps forever denied him. He sighed, and turned back to stare at his own sleeping face once more.

It was then that he noticed that his eyes were now open, where once they’d been closed in unconscious sleep. McCoy found himself staring into that blue-eyed gaze he’d often met in the mirror, only to discover that the look In his eyes wasn’t friendly. Instead, malevolence glared out of his face, and an evil smile crooked at his lips.

“You’re mine now, doctor,” hissed a voice that was recognisably his, despite the tone being completely different. “Your body is mine to do with as I wish. I told you not to stay on my planet, didn’t I? I warned you all, and now you will pay.”

With a shock that almost dissipated his ethereal form, McCoy realised that the witch they’d left upon the surface of Trianguli VI hadn’t disappeared as had been first assumed. Instead, she’d possessed the body of McCoy, pushing the doctor‘s spirit out in the process.

“Why me?” he asked, futilely, hoping against everything that he still had left to him that he’d be able to reclaim his own body once more, sooner rather than later.

“Your captain refused my order. Your captain needs to be taught a lesson for his impudence, and not listening to a direct plea to be left alone. I could not get into the body of the one with the pointy ears; his mind is too closed, his body too strong for me to penetrate. You are more open for my needs, Doctor McCoy,” the witch said, lilting tones adding a menacing timbre to McCoy’s voice that he’d never had before.

“Why you - “ McCoy growled, surging forward to try and harm the witch.

He was flung through the air by the witch’s outstretched hand, just as Spock re-entered the room. McCoy felt the passage of his spirit pass through the Vulcan’s body, and he felt the brush of Spock’s alien mind.

“McCoy,” Spock said, frowning and turning to face the spot where McCoy had landed.

“Spock, please help me,” McCoy said, knowing that the Vulcan was possibly his only chance at reclaiming his body.

He watched as Spock turned and frowned at the now sitting body of McCoy. An oddly unsettling smile now sat upon McCoy’s face, at odds with his usually open and friendly smile.

“You are not the doctor,” Spock announced, coldly. “That body is not yours to control.”

“I told you to leave my planet, didn’t I? Trianguli VI is mine,” the eerie voice issued forth from between McCoy’s lips.

“You’re the witch,” Spock announced, before he surged forward, strong hands wrapping around the former doctor’s neck.

He pressed down hard with one hand, before pinching at the nerve where neck met shoulder. He watched grimly as the possessed McCoy’s head lolled back, mouth open and the Vulcan took his chance.

“McCoy, now,” Spock snapped, urgently, feeling the wind of McCoy’s spirit passing by him.

He watched as the body of McCoy twitched and jumped in his arms and the Vulcan kept a strong hold upon the doctor’s shoulders. He could feel the massive fight going on in the doctor’s body as McCoy struggled to regain control of it, before a second wind announced the witch had left his body. McCoy blinked, relieved at feeling the comfortable and familiar confines of his own body after being floating formless for seemingly so long.

A familiar, wide and cheerful smile stretched across McCoy’s face before he said - “I’m back, Spock.”

Spock sighed, melodramatically, aiming for an extremely long-suffering expression, yet McCoy could see something that was almost relief deep within the Vulcan’s brown eyes. Outside in the corridor, a ruckus erupted, and Kirk’s voice was plainly heard, shouting. Scurrying feet announced something transpiring and it didn’t take long for Spock and McCoy to follow the commotion to the transporter room. The wind of the witch’s soul’s passage swirled around the room, while Scotty lay sprawled and unconscious on the floor. Kirk was outside, phaser already primed for use, hazel eyes narrowed as he watched the progress of the witch’s soul as it coalesced and turned corporeal again.

“Release me,” she screamed, before shattering outwards into her ethereal, ghostly form once more.

“Solidify and we will,” Spock yelled into the whirling morass circling the transporter room.

Kirk watched as Spock made his way over to the transporter room’s console, before positioning himself at the controls. Every so often, the tall Vulcan would duck, getting out of the way of the invisible force that still circled the room. McCoy ducked in after Spock, to kneel beside the fallen form of Scotty, checking him over with quick and clever hands. Kirk positioned himself by the transporter bay and waited, ducking at the last minute when the witch’s essence whirled overhead.

“Now, Spock, now,” Kirk yelled, as the Vulcan activated the transporter’s controls.

Kirk ducked away as the transporter was energised, beaming the witch down and back to her planet once more. McCoy watched her go, with a growing sense of relief, as Scotty began to recover at his knees. Kirk looked to the doctor and nodded at him when McCoy glanced his way.

“You okay?” Kirk asked, blithely, as though he hadn’t been concerned for McCoy previously.

McCoy shrugged and said - “I’ll live, I guess.”

Kirk nodded, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as he said - “Just so long as I know, Bones. Back to work.”

He then strode from the room, purposefully, leaving McCoy staring at Spock in disbelief.

“You wouldn’t know by Jim’s reaction I’d just been possessed b y an evil witch, would you?” McCoy asked, with a wry grin at the Vulcan.

“Oh, he was quite worried, I assure you, Doctor,” Spock replied, blandly. “I think he’s just merely disguising his true feelings about the subject however. Why do you humans do that?”

“Do what? Hide our feelings? Sometimes, we just don’t like admitting we care about others, Spock,” McCoy said, with a grin.

“Fascinating,” Spock said, despite the fact that his arch eyebrow lift indicated he didn’t really understand the concept.

“You’re better off not quite getting it for a wee while, Spock,” Scotty said, stepping in for McCoy, a small grin tugging at the corners of his mouth.

Spock merely raised both eyebrows at Scotty but otherwise said nothing at all. McCoy laughed, before leading the Vulcan from the room, back to the bridge once more.

~~ the end ~~


End file.
